It's been an entire week with no post, so here goes. I've written a bit about how this winter, pain in my right hip impeded my ability to run. The irritation was clearly soft tissue, all up around the iliac crest on my right side. During the Boston Prep 16 miler, this got pretty severe, but I had no choice but to keep on going. If I stopped running for a week or so, most of my symptoms would disappear, only to return as soon as I tried to run again. Riding the bike and even doing other stuff in the gym involving strenuous hip-flexor movements did not cause me any issues. Weird.
I got a lot of massages, and my glute medius and TFL on that side were sure enough pretty tight. My hips and ITB have always been that way, and I'd been neglecting them, but the massages didn't fix anything. So I started seeing a chiropractor. She thought I was mostly OK, and has helped me with my neck, but no miracles. I wasn't running hardly at all by March, and with bike racing season around the corner, I pretty much decided the hell with running this year. I was thinking maybe I had a small muscle tear or something and it might need time to heal. I didn't bother trying to get an MRI because if I stopped running, the pain went away, and I doubted any imaging would be conclusive. All my running and duathlon goals for this spring were going to be unattainable due to my lack of running base, so it was time to race bikes.
Then at my last chiro visit Dr. Sue got a good crack out of my left SI, but the right just wouldn't budge. My LMT has had to work hard in that area so we decided I'd try more of that and I went on my way. As everyone knows, the weather has been favorable, and I've been putting in a lot of hours on the bike. Last weekend I was tired but managed a solid four hours solo on Saturday, out in the wind, dodging roads closed by flooding. Then on Sunday the Cronoman made room in his busy social schedule to do some hill work with me in the area where Hilljunkie does his lunch rides. We got an early start, riding from Nashua over the famed "Rutledge Ridge" (Marro names the cols in his area after whomever has dropped him there the most in the past, and Brett put in a good performance on this one decades ago) aka Tater Road. Then we went to New Boston and climbed straight up Meetinghouse, which turns into Joe English Road, another good climb. We were running out of time and had to really high-tail back to Nashua in a two-man TT, ending with three very solid hours.
Why the hurry? Well our club's main sponsor, Goodale's Bike Shop was holding their annual spring sale. If you don't know Goodale's, it's one of the largest bike shops in the country. As sponsored riders, we assist at the sale (and prepare for retirement age supplementary income jobs) by working as "greeters," helping customers get bikes out the door, load them in cars, etc. As a lazy-assed cyclist who strictly follows the "never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down" school of off the bike recovery, I wasn't looking forward to being on my feet from noon to 5, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I showed up for "work," touching base with longtime friend Rockin' Retail Ronnie, the store manager. So I'm hanging around waiting for some action, and I started chatting with the folks from CPTE, or Center for Physical Therapy and Exercise, who had a demo booth set up inside the store for promotion. Well introduction led to discussion and within five minutes, Patsy Wolber, who is a physical therapist and former track racer was evaluating my hip. After confirming that my right SI joint was indeed not moving properly (i.e. not at all), she continued to check out the effects, and explained to me how the immobility in the joint was creating a functional leg length discrepancy, as in making my right leg seem longer. Her idea was that this was causing my glute medius and other hip flexors to over-fire when I try to run.
The next step, rather than standing and getting sore legs, was heading straight to the therapy table where Patsy showed me some techniques and exercises I could use to try to regain mobility in the joint. I can't thank her enough, because it was awesome. The difference that a knowledgeable person experienced in working with athletes can make is incredible. Not that I'm cured overnight; I'm not, but at least now I think I can be confident in where my problem is coming from, and start a plan to fix it. I think this has existed with me to varying degrees for years. I've always felt a little "crooked" but nobody has ever diagnosed it like this before, and it all seems to make sense. I've been focused entirely on the soft tissue issues that are the effect, not the cause. Of course it's possible that this is not my chief or only issue causing the pain, but it's still worth working on. So I should be on the floor doing those movement right now. If I lived up closer to that way, I'd be going to CPTE on a regular basis for professional treatment. If you in southern New Hampshire or anywhere accessible, I highly recommend seeing Patsy, as she knows cycling. Thanks for reading.
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